Category: Education Article

It may be a constantly changing world for our students, but one thing is for certain: Being kind is just as important now as ever before. Send students the message that kindness is a top priority—and honor the reality that showing it can take courage, creativity, and persistence—by including books about it in your curriculum. Here are 23 of our favorite kindness books for the classroom.

(Just a heads up, WeAreTeachers may collect a share of sales from the links on this page. We only recommend items our team loves!)

1. Boo Who? by Ben Clanton (Pre-K–1)

It can be hard to find ways to include someone new—especially when that someone is invisible—but it’s worth the effort. Simple and sweet, it’s easy for kids to “see” the possible connections between this story and their own lives.

Buy it: Boo Who? on Amazon

2. What Does It Mean To Be Kind?

PBL Spotlight: 5th Grade Restaurant Math Tipping Guide

by Drew Perkins, Director of TeachThought PD

Every year since their kindergarten years I have extended my offer to teachers of my daughters to help out in any way they might find useful. Some of them have taken me up on my offer and asked me to chaperone a field trip or help with some minor classroom activities on special occasions, and I was happy to help.

But I was ecstatic in 2017, when my oldest daughter’s 5th-grade teacher, Kristen Rowling (now Taylor) asked me to collaborate on some PBL planning and co-teaching. What we came up with together was a relatively short project that incorporated an authentic audience and a product that helped her contextualize a need to learn how to mathematically work with decimals and percentages in meaningful ways.

This project isn’t meant to serve as an exemplar–for that please